Windows Media Player 11: Sometimes very frustrating!

[Joel Crane]

I started using Windows Media Player 11 when I discovered that it supported album and and synchronizing with my Pocket PC and Nokia Phone. There are some things I love about it, and some things I hate about it.

First, I love that when I rename a song within WMP, it automatically changes the name of the file as well as the Artist and Album directories if needed.

While that is very convenient, it is very IN convenient when WMP decides that a certain song isn't what it is labeled as. Several times now, WMP has taken individual songs and renamed their artists and albums to something that they really just aren't. It's very aggrivating when a song dissapears, but a whole new band that I've never heard of shows up and, oh, what do you know, there's the missing song.

Another thing i dislike is getting album art and information. In order to obtain these, you usually have to manually search a database. It seems to be some kind of Explorer pop up window that this is done in, and it is very very slow and counter-intuitive. Finding the right band and album is 100x harder than it should be. iTunes automatically finds the album art with one little click.

Finally, is the album art itself. When I download a song off Amazon, it comes with pretty, high resolution album art. When WMP downloads album art, it is small. This is very frustrating. By the way, Amazon mp3 downloads has changed the way I obtain music. Be sure to try it out!

Does the Zune software have these same annoyances? Will it still Sync up to my Pocket PC, Phone (In flash drive mode), Flash drive mp3 players, and will it NOT totally screw up my library?

[stlbud]

...it is very IN convenient when WMP decides that a certain song isn't what it is labeled as. Several times now, WMP has taken individual songs and renamed their artists and albums to something that they really just aren't. It's very aggrivating when a song dissapears, but a whole new band that I've never heard of shows up and, oh, what do you know, there's the missing song.


I just love it when Microsoft tries to be helpful! You can turn this off by going to the Tools menu, select Options and click on the Library tab. In Automatic Media Updates for Files, either uncheck Retrieve Additional Information from the Internet or make sure you only select Only Add Missing Information. Overwrite All Media Information only seems to work when buying from a Microsoft blessed web site. If you get your tracks from somewhere else and Media Player can't find an exact match it seems to pick whatever it thinks is close enough and stuffs in garbage.

...Another thing i dislike is getting album art and information. In order to obtain these, you usually have to manually search a database. It seems to be some kind of Explorer pop up window that this is done in, and it is very very slow and counter-intuitive. Finding the right band and album is 100x harder than it should be. iTunes automatically finds the album art with one little click.


I've never had much luck with this either. I think it has something to do with Microsoft's limited understanding of music in general. Possibly too much caffeine from those Seattle coffee houses.

...Finally, is the album art itself. When I download a song off Amazon, it comes with pretty, high resolution album art. When WMP downloads album art, it is small. This is very frustrating.


Someone at Microsoft thought 200x200 pixel album art was fine for everyone. I add my own album art (usually from Amazon) at 500x500 pixels and they stay as I set them (see above).

...Does the Zune software have these same annoyances? Will it still Sync up to my Pocket PC, Phone (In flash drive mode), Flash drive mp3 players, and will it NOT totally screw up my library?

Zune software will only sync with Zune ... for now.

[Joel Crane]

I've been thinking about trying iTunes, but I'm still worried about compatibility with my Pocket PC and other MP3 players. Plus, I lose the ability to stream to my Xbox. Frustrating!

[stlbud]

Alright now! We'll have none of that kind of talk! :-)

I'm new to Zune coming from iTunes. Comparing the two, they both have their own faults.

Both have problems with album art, album artist and artist. I think Media Player handles albums better (Yes, I really do). Media Player doesn't have cover flow - yet - but seems to keep tracks for an album together better the iTunes.

iTunes presents a massive list of tracks when you are not looking at albums. All the tracks look the same there is nothing separating one album from the other. I suppose this works fine for some folks but I like albums and want to see things grouped together.

iTunes search is better - IMHO.

Otherwise they are very much alike. iTunes will not exhibit the behavior you mentioned before but now that you know how to turn it off, who cares.

If you still want to try iTunes, go ahead but be careful with the download. Apple will try to force QuickTime and Safari on you along with iTunes making for a very big download and taking up a lot of disk space. You will also have to watch out when QuickTime tries to take over all of your media files.

[Joel Crane]

Gross! I'll be avoiding iTunes then! Thanks you very much for the advice.